Authors note
This is a dream I had.
---
The trash continent.
I've imagined it many times over the years, but never in my wildest dreams could I have envisioned the reality. The last survey team had declared it to be almost the size of Guam, but that was years ago.
It's been growing.
No country will admit to still dumping their refuse here, but it must be twice that size already. We've been here for five days and still haven't found the other coast. Not that we've been traveling very fast.
The land is dangerous. It's covered from top to bottom in a thick ooze that seems to act as a mortar, holding its very mass together. It's incredibly slippery, even though every step causes a loud crunching of the ancient metals and plastics below.
Something's been blurring the satellite images of this ever growing wasteland for years. The whole area is covered in a thick orangish cloud that wafts upwards out of air pockets below the surface. In places the ground shakes as a bubble pushes it's way upwards through the filth, letting out noxious flatulence that tints the air around us. When my survey team first arrived, I didn't think the smell could get any worse.
Oh how wrong I had been.
The further in we went, the more the stench grew. With every breath I received a mouthful of millions of pounds of rotting food, years in the making. It wasn't unusual for members of the group to spontaneously vomit. The stench got into everything. There was no avoiding it, no reprieve.
We had been hired to map the coastline, but that was a nebulous task at best. The edges of the landmass were little more than loosely floating plains of refuse. Millions of plastic bags and empty cans covered the ocean for more than a mile in any direction.
We attempted to chart these at first, but they proved difficult. There was no way to walk to the edge, and even approaching it was dangerous. The land became less stable the further out until any random step could give way beneath you, plunging you down into the slimy goop below.
We saved Jim, he only fell up to his neck in sea water. Mark wasn't so lucky. He disappeared in an instant, mid-sentence, straight downwards. We reached in after him, but all we found were armfulls of greenish slime that covered us like snot.
We headed inland immediately after that. The center of the island was much more compact, even if the smell was worse.
Rather than stick to the perimeter, we decided to travel straight across the landmass to determine its diameter. Assuming it was basically a circle, we could at least discover the general circumference. It was necessary to find something. The people back home needed to know about this looming threat.
So we began to walk. The going was always rough. Hills and mountains of trash swelled forth in random piles all around us. It slipped underfoot and often squirted hot ooze upwards with each step. Many strange obstacles blocked our way while jagged pieces of metal stuck of the ground like the teeth of a giant monster, snaring and snagging at our heavy boots and protective pants. We tried to travel around the mountainous piles, but the low points of the land all held slow running rivers of sludge. There was no walking through them. They are as thick as molasses, dragging in and sucking down anything that comes too close.
The hills were no better though. The slime was often not strong enough to hold the piles of trash together under our weight. Walls crumbled like cake beneath our hands and caused massive avalanches of moldy refuse.
That's how we lost Brendan. The last I saw him, he was trying to climb up a hill that looked particularly stable. Next thing I knew, kitchen appliances were rolling down the hill and raining from the sky. We found what was left of him under an old refrigerator. Enough to identify, but not enough to take home.
By the second day there was already talk of turning back, but I couldn't allow it. This mission was too important. Too important for both humanity and my career. Besides, we all knew what we had signed up for. Dangerous for sure, but imagine the stories we would return with, the photographs, the impact on the world. This trip could change everything, but only if we make it to the other side.
We pressed onwards, ignoring the grumbles of discontent. The way was slow, very slow, but we did cover ground. The second day was mostly about learning how to traverse the terrain safely. It wasn't until the third day that we really began to trek.
Thankfully, the path became safer the further we went. The center of the island is the oldest part. The mountains of trash have been slowly leveled by the elements over the years, and the force of new garbage pushing in has packed the ground ever more tightly. Still, it took nearly the entire day to make it to somewhat steady ground. We were all completely exhausted by the time we set up camp.
On that third night, something miraculous happened.
I got used to the smell.
Or maybe I should say, my body could no longer handle the smell and blocked it from my mind. It was still there, ever present, ever invasive, but I learned to only notice it in the taste of food or water. My nose had seemingly closed itself off, rather than continue this torture. It was the greatest relief I could have imagined, outside of leaving this place forever. And I wasn't the only one. The others seemed to have passed the worst of it as well. A spark of the joyful adventurers I had gathered on the mainland returned to their sullen faces. We shared breakfast with a muted enthusiasm before setting off once more.
Without that ever present scent plaguing my every thought, the fourth day was easier. I spent more time focusing on my surroundings. It felt like waking up from a dream. Suddenly the world around me was more than a reminder of my torture. I began to notice all sorts of things I had missed.
The landscape varied as we traveled depending on what trash it was composed of. Areas of biological matter had condensed into mushy swamps that spotted the land. Fungal tendrils snaked out of these festering pits and strangled anything in reach. They offered the illusion of firm ground but never held up to human weight. We avoided these as best we could.
We attempted to travel along the bank of one of the sludge rivers, but this quickly became unnerving. The path seemed safe at first glance, if one managed to ignore the looming towers of garbage stacked fifteen feet high on either side of the river. The walls towered over us as tiptoed along the squishy bank. It was far worse than I had imagined. We sank up to our ankles in the soft mush, and any wrong step would immediately result in an avalanche above or falling into the river below. We took these paths carefully when absolutely necessary, but avoided them as much as possible.
We traveled more often through the fields of mangled scrap metal. The ground was better here, made up of bits of plastic and destroyed paper layered on top of each other and packed down by years of steady toxic rainfall. It was almost like a forest floor, layers of pine needles and leaves creating a soft cushion to stand upon. If I tried hard, I could almost imagine the twisted car frames and scrapped pieces of industrial machinery as a type of foliage of their own.
That wasn't all I noticed though. The further we went, the more I began to see signs of life. There were plenty of cockroaches from the first moment. Millions of them scurried this way and that, most not bigger than a fingernail but a few bigger than my hand.
Then there were the rats. They were better at keeping out of sight, but occasionally I would catch a few dozen in a darkened hole. Their little chittering did not do justice to their size. Almost as big as my forearm, they roamed the land making a feast of both insects and garbage as if they were born in it. I suppose they probably were.
To my great surprise I even found birds. At least, I think they were birds. Corrupted by the polluted land, these creatures have no feathers and no flight. Were it not for the beaks and general shape, I would not have been able to recognize them with their mottled, sore covered raw flesh. They hop around the tops of particularly festering piles and dig their blackened beaks into the ground in search of something resembling food. I wonder how long they will take to form a new species, or go extinct entirely.
But it was not until the fifth day, at this very moment, that I notice the most amazing sign of life of all. The structure before me could not have been formed by the random motion of the trash, nor could it have been shaped by any form of animal.
I stand before a human settlement. Slanted shack houses cobbled together by whatever pieces of garbage lay around. There's no one in sight, but by the size of the settlement there must have been at least a dozen humans here at one point.
"What is this?" I ask to my partner who is equally amazed by this find.
"I mean, it has to be human. Right? Could it have been left behind by the last survey team?"
"They never mentioned anything about this in their reports. Besides, this would have taken days to build, maybe weeks."
"But who else would have come here? Foreign military? Shipwreck survivors?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. This island has been growing for more than a hundred years now, but it's always been considered unlivable for humans. Whoever was here, they've probably been dead for a long time. We should move on."
He nods his assent and relegates the orders to the others. They seem more hesitant than ever, but we set out at once at a pace that puts our fears behind us. Besides, we've got to be nearing the halfway mark. There's no point in turning back now.
We walk for several more hours, but even I can feel the tension slowly rising. The settlement casts the world around us in a new light. I find myself wondering if every towering pile is of human origin, or if any of the dank pits are modified homes. The men seem nervous as the already dim light begins to fade. Every shadow in the distance speaks of untold residents that we're intruding upon, untold monsters lurking within the miles of human waste.
We stop to set up camp sooner than I would have liked, but I don't argue. I admit that the feeling is getting to me too. Hopefully a meal and a good night's sleep will rejuvenate all of us.
But I don't get a good night's sleep. I'm awoken in the pitch blackness by the sound of whispers just outside of my tent. At first I think it's just some of my men using the bathroom, but they don't seem to be talking in English.
For a moment I consider pulling the blankets over my head and ignoring it entirely. Instead I grab my flashlight and inch over to the door flap, unzipping it as quietly as possible. The talking has stopped by the time I stick my head out.
"Who's there." I say firmly into the night. There's no response. I unzip my tent the rest of the way and take a few steps out into the darkness.
"I'm warning you. I'm armed." I lie to my surroundings as I cast my beam across the land.
It seems to have been my imagination. There's no one in sight. I sigh and rub my eyes, certain that the stress of this trip is finally making me hallucinate. I'm almost back in my tent when I hear it again, a soft murmuring coming from right behind me.
I spin in place with my flashlight. Three people are standing only a few feet away, but they're not like any people I've ever seen. Grotesque and malformed, their bodies are hairless, naked, and covered in oozing sores. Massive growths distort their misshapen forms into a mockery of the human shape. They hiss loudly when the light shines upon them and run off into the night as I begin to scream.
Within moments the rest of my crew is surrounding me, but it's too late. The creatures are already gone. I explain what happened to the rest of them, and we spend the rest of the night bunched together for safety.
It's not until morning that we discover the missing supplies. More than half of our food is gone. Food necessary for the return trip. Even worse, the bag containing most of our navigation equipment is gone as well. They took a lot, a lot more than we could lose.
There's an immediate uproar amongst the men. They want to turn back. I can't blame them. I can only explain how bad of an idea that would be. We've already crossed what we believe is the halfway mark. Turning back would actually take longer. We still have our radio. As long as we can make it to one of the shores, we can call in a boat and send up a flare so they can find us. Unfortunately the sky is too clouded with that orange fog for any sort of air travel.
We've lost our navigation tools, but the position of the sun is enough to tell us which way to go. Unsurprisingly, the men are eager to move. We cover ground faster than ever before.
But the feeling of being watched has only intensified. Shadows hang heavy on the land, flickering with ever present threats. The strange noises of animals all around remind me of the language I heard last night. The men scream at the slightest disturbances causing us all to spin in fear.
It's tense to say the least, and it only gets worse a few hours later. We crest the top of a hill made up of empty milk gallons and look down at the valley below. Even from this high up, I can tell that the object in the center is of human origin. There doesn't seem to be anyone around, and no other route, so we descend despite our uncertainties.
Standing at least twelve feet tall in the very middle of the valley is a large statue. Though made of odd pieces of metal scrap, it strongly resembles a human. The mouth is made of the front grill of some massive car, broken and stretched to resemble teeth. The eyes are broken headlights of some sort. They still glimmer eerily when the light catches them. The body is little more than an unrecognizable shard of pure steel jutting out of the ground. Split pieces of steel bend off from the main slab to form arms and head.
The men don't want to approach it. Even from half way up the hill I can see something sinister hanging from its windshield wiper fingers. Something fleshy. Something that used to be living. Besides, the way that steel is bent is a little too life like. I can't imagine the logistics required to transport heavy machinery this far onto the island, but no human is strong enough to bend steel like that.
We don't really have a choice in the matter. Any path besides downwards seems too unsafe to manage. This side of the hill is much more loosely packed than the side we climbed. A sea of rusty can lids and plastic wrappers surround us making turning back almost impossible.
Towards the statue it is. Each step brings the thing into more horrifying clarity. Bones and skulls litter the floor around it while human entrails seem to be dangling from its fingers and teeth. The only way past it puts us only a few feet from the giant monstrosity. It's even more terrifying up close, towering over us and watching with a sickening smile. We all watch it closely as we walk around it, certain it might move at any moment. But nothing happens as we climb the hill beyond. Nothing springs from the rubble or stirs in the distance. We climb past, and then we're gone.
We continue to walk until nightfall. The men don't really want to stop, but we can't possibly traverse the dangerous ground in the darkness. We can barely keep our footing in the daylight. They're obviously reluctant to set up camp, and I can't blame them. We don't know where those 'creatures' came from or where they went. They might even be following us still.
We reach a compromise that lands us in the back of a school bus. It's sticking vertically out of the ground, but the inside is still fairly clean. The seats provide our beds for the night, even if we have to climb upwards to get into them. There's a good amount of scuffling about and stepping on fingers before we all settle in, but it seems much more secure than our flimsy tents. I fall asleep almost immediately, my weariness overcoming my fear far faster than expected.
When I wake, to my great surprise, it's from the first light of the sun shining through a shattered window. No attack, no terrors in the night, I almost feel safe for the first time in days.
But that feeling doesn't last long. Once everyone's awake and we sort through the confusion of climbing out of the bus, we suddenly notice something missing. There's only five of us standing together. Last night there were six.
We search the bus, but there's no sign of poor Dave. He had been sleeping on the bottom, closest to the door. He had even bragged about claiming it first while the rest of us complained about the climb to our makeshift beds. Did he wander out in the night without us and have an accident? Or did someone pull him and his bag straight out of the bus quietly enough to not wake the rest of us? Is that even possible?
I don't know, and honestly, I don't want to know. I want to get off this damn island. Thankfully, the others seem perfectly willing to set off without even looking for Dave. I'm glad that no one even mentions it. I'd hate to have that argument. Everyone already knows that the mission is canceled. Now we're just trying to survive.
But survival is not easy on this, our seventh day. The path forward grows more and more treacherous. Giant fissures split the earth in odd patterns making progress extremely difficult. They are often completely invisible until you reach the very edge. I almost took a fatal tumble off of one myself when my foot suddenly slid into the ground. I caught a hold of the edge of a moldy sofa and held on for dear life as the loose refuse around me plummeted into the abyss.
The rivers on this side seem bigger too. They flow in random paths across the land, often twenty feet wide with depth unknown. The surface is as thick as jello, and pulsates unnaturally with the motion of swamp gasses beneath. Sometimes the pressure is too great and the river splatters its surroundings in a massive belch of orange gas.
We are often forced to backtrack and take massive detours to get around areas that are totally uncrossable. After a few hours of side diversions and alternate routes, I'm totally turned around. All I can do is rely on my navigator and hope that he has a better idea of the direction than me. He no longer has any of his supplies, not even a compass, but I trust him to keep us going straight by the position of the sun.
Then again, in the endless orange upwards the exact position of the sun is often tenuous at best.
All I can do is keep walking and pray that it's not to my death.
When the light begins to fade, there's no convenient school bus within sight. We settle for setting up our tents very close together against a wall of splintered fence posts. None of us are comfortable sleeping through the night without a sentry. We divy up the our time slots and attempt to get some rest. I'm happy that I'll get a full six hours before it becomes my turn.
It's not as easy to fall asleep as it had been on the bus, but it still doesn't take long before a deep slumber sneaks up on me. I can't seem to resist the ache of weariness and tension that has been building with each passing day, no matter how terrified I am of sleeping in this wasteland.
I drift into a deep resting sleep, my body snatching up every possible moment for recovery. Six hours will be enough. Six hours will buy me the strength I need to walk out of this hellhole.
But I don't get six hours.
It's only thirty minutes before the screaming begins.
Part 2- This is all I have so far. SORRY. I'm going to work on it this week before holidays start. I promise.I'll at least finish this part.
"Get up! Get up! They're here!" Shouts Jim, the first sentry of the evening.
"Who's here?" I ask as I burst to my feet, flashlight already in hand. Jim doesn't respond, but he doesn't need to. The answer is obvious the moment I leave the tent.
I can see them out there in the darkness, lightly silhouetted shadows creeping in through the endless fog. They seem to be everywhere, all around us, waiting just out of sight. My flashlight cuts through the darkness like a knife at the closest figure, but I only see the scurrying of something fleshy and hear the sound of footsteps on garbage.
The others surround me now. No one dare make a sound while our brains furiously try to catch up. I'm still bleary eyed, almost more tired than I was when I fell asleep, but the adrenaline is already pumping through my veins. My skin flushes hot while my heart begins to beat so loudly that I can feel it in my chest. Somehow, I'm ready. I feel like I've known this was coming since the moment I saw that first human settlement.
"Run." I order my men. I don't have to say it twice.
We turn tail, facing the only direction that seems lacking in shadowy figures, and make a dash, grabbing only what we can reach on the path. It isn't much, but there wasn't much left anyway.